It’s no surprise that I decided to whip up this painting of a tree while working on another piece. I am drawn to doodling trees (pun intended) and have wanted to do a tree painting for some time. Usually I use my watercolor paper scraps to test colors, but I took this oblong piece and decided its shape would be perfect.

I’ve had a love of trees for much of my life. When I was a child, I enjoyed playing under a pine tree in the front yard. It was shady and cool there, and I’d pretend I was living in the woods all alone, having to live off the land. I thought I was inspired by the book The Boxcar Children, but now I think I was just a bit of a loner as I am now. I have to ensure I have solitude from time to time, to give myself peace and rest away from everything and everyone else in life.  Perhaps that was also what I was striving for as a child.

I don’t play under trees now, but I still have a great fondness for them. I love to study the shapes of the branches and to ponder everything they’ve experienced in their life.  I feel the energy of trees so deeply, which has me believe if I had lived a past life/lives, that perhaps I was a bird.

I used the same palette of blues, blue-greens and green-blues I am using for my current meditation piece and some masking fluid. First, I laid a pale blue wash. Once this was dry, I then painted the shape of my tree with the masking fluid. (Painting the wash and then applying the masking fluid ensures the tree shape will retain the color of the wash.)

After the masking fluid dried, I layered my colors in, some joining and overlapping. I did paint one more layer of color before I removed the masking fluid from the paper.

“Untitled,” watercolor by Angela Conley, 2011.

Typically, paintings take much longer for me to complete. I finished this one in 1-2 weeks; I could’ve had it done sooner but was busy. I’m considering framing it over some colored paper (perhaps red for contrast and to match my decor?) or decoupaging it over another surface, such as more paper or fabric.

The bigger question though, is what to call this piece???